Basics.1 - Cure

Let's have a conversation on healing through creating your own solution: How Creativity Heals Wounds + Invitation for Meeting in Portuguese

Cure

Allow me to tell you openly that in the last 2 months, I’ve been looking for a cure. Not a cure for something physical solely, but a cure for wounds that crossed many levels of my being. I was looking for a cure for my habits, for my mindset, for my emotions, and for physical symptoms too. And before you imagine I was sick, addicted or suffering from a rare disease, know that I was not. I was suffering from something that most people call burnout, stress, or simply anxiety but let’s forget about labels for now.

During that period, I stayed operational at the minimum level, only doing the basics. And doing only the basics allowed me to see clearly that I was suffering from a troubled mind that was receiving inputs, advice, instructions, orders and data from all directions. All these conflicting forces broke my mind and created an abyss. That abyss devoured all my options and swallowed all my previous beliefs into that enormous black crack. I was left with nothing: no life hacks, no religion, no -isms, no trends and no law of attraction.

Note: while I write, I can hear my mind disclaiming that I refuse to sound like a victim, which I’m not. This looking for a cure can sound like I was seeing myself as powerless, incomplete, weak, and in need of something external. However, it takes courage to allow those emotions to be expressed while keeping grounded. Deep inside, I knew that I was not broken at a point of no return. I was not even broken. There was nothing wrong with me. Despite knowing that, the sensation of being broken was there. And I decided to honor that. So no matter how broken you might feel, you’re not lost. So I invite you to see this allowance of feeling like a s**t as an empowering decision if you allow it now but looking forward. And I also want to disclaim that while my experience may sound very subjective, abstract and disturbing, I kept my rational mind awake and lucid. I was observing a phenomenon while still feeling it. So in summary, 3 things I knew for sure all the time:

1. I was alive - that meant a lot to me.

2. For every detour from Nature/Life, there’s a return, no matter how far I got from Nature, I can go back to it for this is all around me (I live part of my week in a forest, to give you context),

3. and I’m not a victim.

And that was my way out.

Creativity is the cure

Passing some days from the first month, I could see clearly that while I had nothing more to hang on in front of me, I still had my consciousness observing all that was happening. And from that discovery (or better, remembering) that I was still there, I could see even more. I could see the landscape of my soul. So it looked like there were not things to catch, labels to read, but there was an aggressive natural landscape of an abyss, like a volcano hole. So I saw that nature remains when all the verbal, human and technological artifacts are gone.

It required me a dose of openness and creativity to move from this natural, non-verbal landscape to resume my life as I was used to: full of work, vibrant and fast communication with people, amenities, comforts from technology and big cities. In the next edition, I’ll write you about the importance of (real) culture and the longing for connection. With a very interesting comparison, I’ll show you what I see as the cause of us feeling lost, shallow, supple, and bombarded, from time to time.

For now, I want to bring light to Creativity as a process to cure yourself. After all, you can’t wait for someone to cure you, or give you the answers you need, or even appear like an angel and lull you to sleep. It can happen, but you cannot wait for it. You need to act first. And creativity is to act first. It’s to create your way out, or your way in, whatever direction you need to go first. Creativity is also a mindset where you allow things to emerge. It might look like the opposite of what I’ve just said, but allowing is an act, you can’t deny it. Allowing requires courage and empowerment. Some people allow bad things to happen and grow but you can allow ideas to flow and new, fresh air to enter too. It’s up to you what you are allowing to happen. Even blocking something is a creative act. If you block a person or a recurrent uncomfortable situation that you no longer want to keep reacting to, you are taking action and owning your decisions.

For me, being creative meant cutting most of the input and information sources around me, tuning with the sound of my natural landscape and finding the most pure, untouched, undisturbed, primitive desire that I can recall.

I don’t know how much I am the same as before or how much I changed after this 2-month process, but one thing is sure: nature, life impulses and creativity got me in and got me out, not only unharmed but even more robust, creative and energized. I’m feel like a wild animal with that non-verbal wisdom that we immediately see in their eyes when they are free.

Invitation to all our Portuguese/Brazilian readers

If you speak/understand Portuguese and enjoy Creativity, Art, and Marketing Strategies, I’ll be waiting for you in an online event tomorrow at 7 pm BRT (-3 hours GMT) that Full Sail University (Florida, USA) is organizing with me and other experts. This event is full of career advice and inspiration for creatives who work with sound or feel strongly connected to the creative market. I’m full of insights to share about a project I developed for Itaú, the biggest bank in Brazil and Latin America.

I want to see you here: Zoom link
And feel free to get in touch with your questions before or after the event. Let’s connect :)
Contact me through my website